Romania's opposition Social Democrat party says Sunday's presidential election was rigged and plans to contest the result.

Official results showed incumbent President Traian Basescu with a winning margin of less than 1%.

Earlier, exit polls had predicted victory for his Social Democrat rival, former Foreign Minister Mircea Geoana.

Both candidates had claimed victory on Sunday night in what correspondents describe as a bitter contest.

"We have proof of fraud," Social Democrat vice-president Liviu Dragnea was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.

A dispute over control of European Union foreign policy is breaking out less than a week after the 27-nation bloc adopted the Lisbon treaty, designed to improve decision-making procedures and enhance the EU's global influence.

The clash pits countries that want to promote the authority of Lady Ashton, the Briton nominated as EU foreign policy supremo, against nations such as France and Spain, determined to defend the role of national governments in external relations.

EU foreign ministers will debate the matter at a two-day meeting, starting on Monday, which will set the stage for a summit of all 27 heads of state and government on Thursday and Friday.

EU officials are working on a global intellectual property treaty which could rewrite national legislation on copyright but which is being put together in a secretive process which helps to "launder" policies that may be too unpopular to pass through normal democratic channels.

The EU and industrialised countries such as the US, Canada, Australia and Japan have since last spring been negotiating a trade pact known as Acta - the Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement.

The treaty has been presented first and foremost as a way of tackling physical forgeries, such as designer handbags or or pirated DVDs. But leaks reveal that it will also have a much broader scope, including the sensitive issue of intellectual copyright on the internet.

Italy is refusing to give up its bid for the presidency of the Eurogroup and is challenging the informally announced re-appointment of Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker to the job, EurActiv has learned. The battle could also involve the appointment of the new president of the European Central Bank.

"Negotiations over the appointment of the chairman of the Eurogroup are still open," Italian Minister for European Affairs Andrea Ronchi told journalists on Friday (4 December).

"The last word is up to the European Council," Ronchi added, referring to an EU summit which opens in Brussels this week, on Thursday and Friday (10-11 December).

The European Union's foreign ministers are meeting today (7 December) in Brussels to decide the next steps on the integration of EU hopefuls. But leading MEP Eduard Kukan told EurActiv that he is "sceptical" regarding the outcome on Macedonia, a result of what he described as Greece's unwillingess to compromise over the so-called 'name dispute'.

Foreign ministers are gathering in Brussels for a two-day meeting, which for the first time will be called by two new titles, the 'General Affairs Council' and 'Foreign Affairs Council' (GAC & FAC), replacing the previous 'General Affairs and External Relations' (GAERC) Council. The changes are prompted by the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty and the advent of an EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security.

AFP - EU foreign ministers decided Monday to boost ties with Serbia, bringing an end to an 18-month standoff over Belgrade's lack of cooperation with a UN war crimes court, diplomats said.

The move was made possible after the Netherlands, the only nation blocking the deal, dropped its opposition during the ministerial meeting in Brussels.

"The Dutch have said that they are making a gesture (towards Serbia) while keeping up the pressure" for it to cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY)," a European diplomat said on the sidelines of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

However, the EU is still not ready to activate the full Stabilisation and Association Accord (SAA), which is deemed the first official step to EU membership.

Venezia, in verità, già aveva anticipato la capitale nel pomeriggio in cui, lo scorso due ottobre, il Comitato olimpico internazionale premiò Rio de Janeiro per il 2016 e bruciò Obama e la sua Chicago. L'annuncio ufficiale per la candidatura al 2020, pochi secondi dopo la chiusura della partita Rio, venne firmato insieme da Cacciari e Galan. Roma e Alemanno, che dall'estate aveva parlato delle sue intenzioni, furono presi in contropiede. Nei giorni successivi, poi, s'ingrossò un corteo di candidature improbabili - Bari, Palermo, la Romagna - che il Coni ha fermato per lasciare spazio alla grande gara delle città d'arte: Roma contro Venezia, ecco. Entro giugno 2011 l'Italia esprimerà la sua città candidata.

The Obama administration will formally declare Monday that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions pose a danger to the public's health and welfare, a move that lays the groundwork for an economy-wide carbon cap even if Congress fails to enact climate legislation, sources familiar with the process said.

The move, which Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa P. Jackson will announce at an afternoon press conference, comes as the largest climate change conference in history gets underway in Copenhagen. It will finalize an initial "endangerment finding" by the government in April.

While an EPA spokeswoman declined to comment on the matter, the agency sent out a press advisory that Jackson will make "a significant climate announcement at a press briefing" at 1:15 p.m. at EPA headquarters. Jackson will also speak at the U.N.-sponsored climate conference Wednesday; her address is titled "Taking Action at Home." Obama, who will attend the end of the U.N. talks Dec. 18, has sent a series of recent signals to the international community that the United States will curb its carbon output as part of a new global climate deal.

It has taken nearly 20 years to bring the world to this pivotal moment in climate change politics.

Along the roller-coaster ride toward an international agreement, expectations have soared and plummeted dozens of times -- sometimes within a matter of days. But as nations convene today in Copenhagen for the world's largest global warming summit, one thing is new: For the first time, every major greenhouse gas polluter in the world has a promise and a plan to cut carbon.

What that change signifies still isn't clear. Few think the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change conference, which runs through Dec. 18, will conclude with a new international treaty. Too many countries are still sparring over major issues for that. Moreover, the nation others expect to lead the world -- the United States -- still has not passed the legislation required to cut emissions.

A reported 'revolt' among members of its climate change talks' negotiating team has put the Indian government on the political defensive at home. The turmoil comes with some members of India's delegation already in Denmark for the critical United Nations-sponsored summit.

The Environment Minister has told Parliament there has been no change in India's negotiating stance for the Copenhagen climate talks and that the country's 35-member team is again representing a unified position.

In the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Parliament, Jairam Ramesh faced hostile opposition party lawmakers who accused him of yielding to international pressures, undercutting the national interest.

"We are going to Copenhagen with the objective of not accepting any agreement that would put a constraint on expanding electricity supply to rural households, for livelihood security and for all the other economic objectives," Ramesh said.

Delegates left the Bali climate change talks in December 2007 with high hopes that a grand bargain on reducing greenhouse gas emissions would be secured by now.

But today, as the latest round of climate change talks begin with representatives from more than 190 countries gathered in Copenhagen, Denmark, expectations are far more modest.

The biggest decision - a binding international agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions - is likely to be pushed off until next December, when another round of climate talks are scheduled for Mexico City. Nevertheless, two weeks in Copenhagen will yield insights into global efforts to control industrial emissions and the warming of the planet.

The Copenhagen summit next week will generate vast quantities of hot air. It will see 16,500 people coming in from 192 countries. That amounts to 41,000 tons of carbon dioxide, roughly the same as the carbon emissions of Morocco in 2006. Also, the organisers will lay 900 kilometres of computer cable and 50,000 square metres of carpet. More than 200,000 meals will be served and visitors will drink 200,000 cups of coffee -- at least that will be organic.

When asked if the carbon footprint might have been reduced by turning Copenhagen into a video conference, a spokesman for the event said: "For such a major agreement, people need to meet together and negotiate face to face. We have delegates from all over the world. Video-conferencing systems are extremely useful, but they don't match the personal touch. This is one of the main factors in having a good conference."

Does Russia hold hostage the future of a carbon cap-and-trade system that many experts see as a critical tool for curbing global warming gases? Improbable as it may seem, the answer appears to be yes.

That is because Russia, as a result of the collapse of much of its heavy industry in the 1990s, owns one of the world's largest stocks of credits to offset carbon emissions.

The unearned windfall, a legacy of the Kyoto Protocol that was the world's first attempt to come to grips with the threat of climate change, is worth several billion dollars. If abruptly sold abroad, those credits could send the price of carbon on the world's fragile emissions markets plunging toward zero.

Without a predictable and reasonably high price for carbon emissions, most economists say, there is little prospect of setting in motion the many investments needed to shift from a carbon-intensive industrial economy to a more sustainable energy base in developed and developing countries alike.

"
Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges
Copenhagen is preparing for the climate change summit that will produce as much carbon dioxide as a town the size of Middlesbrough."

European Central Bank (ECB) chief Jean-Claude Trichet has urged the government of Greece to follow Ireland's example of taking tough decisions to bring its budget deficit down.

Forecasts suggest both countries will run deficits close to 12 percent of GDP this year, the highest amongst euro area members. The figures compare poorly to an EU average forecast of 6.9 percent.

The Irish government has won praise in financial quarters however by taking a number of drastic steps to tackle the problem, including an emergency budget in April that doubled income tax surcharges and slashed spending.

As the U.S. economy pulls out of a recession and the biggest banks return to profitability, mounting defaults on commercial property may keep regional lenders from repaying bailout funds until at least 2011.

Unpaid loans on malls, hotels, apartments and home developments stood at a 16-year high of 3.4 percent in the third quarter and may reach 5.3 percent in two years, according to Real Estate Econometrics LLC, a property research firm in New York. That's a bigger threat to regional banks, which are almost four times more concentrated in commercial property loans than the nation's biggest lenders, according to data compiled by Bloomberg on bailout recipients.

The concentration makes regulators less likely to let regional lenders like Synovus Financial Corp. and Zions Bancorporation leave the Troubled Asset Relief Program, analysts said. Smaller banks would remain stuck in TARP, while bigger lenders, including Bank of America Corp., repay the government and free themselves to set their own policies on executive pay.

Although the US economy is improving, it is too early to say that the recovery will last, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke has said.

Unemployment could stay "elevated", although inflation is likely to remain "subdued", he said in a speech to the Economic Club of Washington.

Interest rates were likely to stay low for "an extended period", he added.

Following Mr Bernanke's comments, the dollar lost recent gains it had made against the euro.

The euro rose by more than one cent to $1.4883 after Mr Bernanke's remarks, before falling back to $1.4821.

Forget the supercars and green machines. At this year's Los Angeles Auto Show, the emphasis is on affordable small cars and minivans. The auto industry, trying to climb out of its worst sales slump in decades, wants the spotlight on vehicles it can sell -- now.

Last month's tepid U.S. car sales only underscored the industry's need to focus on getting consumers to buy cars, instead of trying to impress the auto critics. So the big global debut at this year's L.A. show, which begins Friday and runs through Dec. 13 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, is a redesigned Toyota minivan. And much of the pre-show buzz has surrounded mass-market economy cars such as the Ford Fiesta and the Chevrolet Cruze.

"It's a very straightforward way of doing things," said Dave Thomas, senior editor at auto website Cars.com. "A Toyota Sienna minivan? That's not the type of thing you would normally debut at the L.A. Auto Show. It's certainly not a sexy car, but it's a big deal for Toyota."

US President Barack Obama is sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan and NATO has pledged an additional 7,000. But in Germany, demands for more soldiers will put Chancellor Merkel in a political bind and could result in a new trans-Atlantic tiff.

The telephone conversation between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and US President Barack Obama last week had been going quite some time, but Obama still hadn't asked the question that Merkel knew was coming. The chancellor had just learned that the US planned to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. She also knew that in a few hours the president was going to specify a date for the beginning of a US withdrawal.

But Obama had still not broached the one question that interested Merkel most: How many additional troops were the Germans expected to send to Afghanistan?

Never one to waste time on small talk, Merkel ultimately asked the question herself. So many numbers have been mentioned in recent weeks, she said. She had heard that some expected 2,000 additional German troops, while another source had even mentioned 2,500. Was this the troop level increase the American administration expected from Germany, she wondered?

He had heard the same numbers mentioned, Obama replied. They didn't come from his staff, though, rather from military experts -- in other words, nothing official.

Russia and India have signed an agreement to increase their civilian nuclear energy co-operation.

The announcement came after talks between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow.

Russia will build a number of nuclear reactors in energy-hungry India as well as increase atomic fuel exports to it.

Bolivian President Evo Morales easily won his second five-year term Sunday night, solidifying the revolution he promises to bring to the country's long-oppressed indigenous majority.

While recent elections in countries such as Uruguay and Honduras have seen Latin America's pendulum swing back to centrist candidates, Mr. Morales - Bolivia's first indigenous president - is one of the region's most strident leftists, a close ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, and a vocal foe of the US. Morales's win chalks up another important victory for the region's hard-left, Chávez-led bloc, which also includes Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Cuba.

Morales, a former coca grower, has many detractors, particularly in the energy-rich lowlands who say his programs to assert greater state control over the economy could destroy national productivity. But his wide victory margin was no surprise: he has long appealed to Bolivians who felt shut out by the old political elites in a country where 60 percent of the population identifies as indigenous and the same percentage falls below the poverty line.

Security forces and militiamen clashed with thousands of protesters shouting "death to the dictator" outside Tehran University on Monday, beating them with batons and firing tear gas on a day of nationwide student demonstrations, witnesses said.

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Thousands of riot police as well as forces of the elite Revolutionary Guard and their allied Basij militiamen flooded the area around Tehran University since the morning, trying to seal off the campus from the outside world and prevent unrest from spilling out into the streets.

Authorities covered the tall fence around the university with banners and signs bearing slogans from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, hiding whatever took place inside. Cell phone networks around the universities were shut down, and police and Revolutionary Guard surrounded entrances, checking IDs of anyone entering to bar opposition activists, witnesses said.

"There's anxiety that there will be violence and shooting. I shout slogans and demonstrate but try not to provoke any clash with the security," Tehran University student Kouhyar Goudarzi told The Associated Press in Beirut by telephone. "We are worried."

79 percent of the American public is in favor of auditing the Fed, according to a new poll by Rassumussen. Because another 14% are not sure, that leaves only 7% opposed to an audit. And as Rassumussen, the support for auditing the Fed is nonpartisan and very widespread:

   "Unlike many issues tracked by Rasmussen Reports, there is virtually no partisan disagreement on the issue of auditing the Fed."

    Similarly, investors and non-investors are equally supportive of the idea. Generally speaking, there is overwhelming support for such auditing across all demographic categories.

Small Businesses Have Lost Confidence Also

You might assume that - despite the public's lack of confidence in Bernanke, Geithner and the economy - at least businesses are confident.

However, as Rassumussen notes:

       After three months of gains, the Rasmussen Employment Index dropped more than four points in November to its lowest level since July. Just 14% of workers now say their employers are hiring, the lowest total since February.

    Economic confidence among America's small business owners in the Discover (R) Small Business Watch(SM) index plummeted in November, as more owners cited serious concerns about cash flow and saw economic conditions for their own businesses getting worse.

The Economy Cannot Recover Until Bernanke and Geithner are replaced

As I have repeatedly written, the economy cannot fundamentally stabilize until trust is restored.

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich wrote that Wall Street's biggest problem right now is the collapse of trust:

   The problem is, government bailouts, subsidies, and insurance aren't really helping Wall Street. The Street's fundamental problem isn't lack of capital. It's lack of trust. And without trust, Wall Street might as well fold up its fancy tents.

....

Forbes wrote an article in 2006 entitled "The Economics of Trust". The article summarizes the importance of trust in creating a healthy economy:

   Imagine going to the corner store to buy a carton of milk, only to find that the refrigerator is locked. When you've persuaded the shopkeeper to retrieve the milk, you then end up arguing over whether you're going to hand the money over first, or whether he is going to hand over the milk. Finally you manage to arrange an elaborate simultaneous exchange. A little taste of life in a world without trust--now imagine trying to arrange a mortgage.

    Being able to trust people might seem like a pleasant luxury, but economists are starting to believe that it's rather more important than that. Trust is about more than whether you can leave your house unlocked; it is responsible for the difference between the richest countries and the poorest.

    "If you take a broad enough definition of trust, then it would explain basically all the difference between the per capita income of the United States and Somalia," ventures Steve Knack, a senior economist at the World Bank who has been studying the economics of trust for over a decade. That suggests that trust is worth $12.4 trillion dollars a year to the U.S., which, in case you are wondering, is 99.5% of this country's income.

Justice Minister Ya'akov Ne'eman on Monday said he believes Halakha (Jewish law) should be the binding law in Israel, Army Radio reported.

"Step by step, we will bestow upon the citizens of Israel the laws of the Torah and we will turn Halakha into the binding law of the nation," said Ne'eman at a Jewish law convention at the Regency hotel in Jerusalem, in the presence of many rabbis and rabbinical judges.

"We must bring back the heritage of our fathers to the nation of Israel," Ne'eman said. "The Torah has the complete solution to all of the questions we are dealing with," he added.

Doch während die Christsozialen das politisch bisher nicht durchsetzen konnten, hat es die SVP ungleich besser: Sie bringt einfach eine Volksinitiative auf den Weg. Damit soll im Detail ein Steuernachlass für Eltern in die Verfassung geschrieben werden, die ihre Kinder nicht in die Krippe geben.

A total of four ocean sunfish have been spotted along Germany's Baltic coast over the last week, far away from their habitat in tropical and temperate waters. Biologists say the awkward, slow-moving and friendly giants are likely to have been swept in by storms.

Maritime experts and beachcombers have been puzzled by the appearance of several sunfish -- strange, disk-shaped creatures that can reach a length of up to 3.30 meters and a weight of over two tonnes -- along Germany's Baltic Sea coast in recent days, thousands of miles away from their normal habitat in tropical and temperate waters around the world.

A fisherman said on Saturday he had caught a 10-kilo, 60-centimeter-long sunfish out of the water near the island of Rügen. Last Wednesday, walkers found two sunfish, one 80 centimetres long and the other a full meter, lying dead on a beach east of the city of Kiel. A day before, passersby had spotted a smaller sunfish that still showed signs of life, and had pushed it back in the water.

Slovenia's capital, Ljubljana, is set to become more visible on the political map of the 27-nation EU as the city has been selected to house the union's Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER), designed to boost the idea of a single European market in electricity and gas.

The decision - taken by EU ministers in charge of energy on Sunday evening (6 December) - puts an end to what was described as "a tough game" between three contestants. Slovakia's Bratislava came in second, while the third bidder, Bucharest in Romania, enjoyed the least support.

"It is a historical day for Slovenia," Slovenian minister Matej Lahovnik said in response to the outcome. In the past, his country failed to get Frontex, the agency responsible for security of the union's external borders, as well as the European Institute for Gender Equality.

The first, provisional dates for the 2010 TTxGP Championship leccy bike racing series have been released. And two new teams have signed up for 2010 race series.

The first e-bike contest of 2010 will be the inaugural event of the North American Championship and will take place at Infineon Raceway in California on 14 and 16 May. Another three US dates are expected to be announced early in the new year.

In a city where clean water has become a commodity that is delivered to the highest bidder, the poor often have to go without.

Yet those who have money can easily get enough. In Mumbai's wealthy suburbs, large tankers delivering water are commonplace.

Every day more than 5,000 tankers deliver some 50 million litres of water to people who can pay, according to unofficial estimates cited by the newspaper Mumbai Mirror.

BBC News - India's Tata launches water filter for rural poor

The Indian industrial conglomerate Tata Group has launched a new low-cost water purifier, aimed at lower-income households in rural areas.

The Tata 'Swach' purifier is less than one metre tall, and does not need running water or electricity to work.

The firm is hoping to revolutionise the business of providing clean water, a lack of which affects almost one billion people globally.

Tata says the device is the result of a decade of research and development.

The Tata Group includes India's largest carmaker Tata Motors, and also has interests in steelmaking, IT, and chemicals.

A cheap catalyst can both generate hydrogen and release energy from it. The new material could be a breakthrough that will allow the unpredictable energy flows from wind and solar farms to be stored.

As nations attempt to put their energy consumption in order, the need for better ways to store electrical power is becoming apparent: wind and solar power installations don't always provide power when it's most needed. Batteries are one option - although they'll have to improve before they are practical for large-scale storage - but another is converting excess electricity into hydrogen and feeding it through a fuel cell later to generate electricity.

Now Vincent Artero at Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, and colleagues have shown that a cheap catalyst could be used to both generate hydrogen to store energy, and also to consume it to extract stored power.

Until now, almost all hydrogen-generating catalysts have been made with the expensive metal platinum, making scaling up their use impractical. A platinum-free catalyst for hydrogen formation was developed in 2006, but it required water-free conditions that were incompatible with conventional methods of making the gas. Artero and his colleagues have solved that problem, coating the platinum-free catalyst in a membrane that lets hydrogen ions reach the catalyst, but not water molecules.

In August, physicist Jia Liu at New York University outlined his design for a spacecraft powered by dark matter (arxiv.org/abs/0908.1429v1). Soon afterwards, mathematicians Louis Crane and Shawn Westmoreland at Kansas State University in Manhattan proposed plans for a craft powered by an artificial black hole (arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803).

No one disputes that building a ship powered by black holes or dark matter would be a formidable task. Yet remarkably there seems to be nothing in our present understanding of physics to prevent us from making either of them. What's more, Crane believes that feasibility studies like his touch on questions in cosmology that other research hasn't considered.

The first call for preparatory EU projects in the field of sport attracted massive requests for funding from all over Europe. 18 projects were selected, dealing with health, education, disabilities and gender equality.

The European Commission received a total of 207 applications in response to the first call for proposalsexternal  for 'preparatory actions in the field of sport,' launched last spring.

The total sum requested amounted to nearly €44 million, but just €4 million of funding was available. Meanwhile, 77 of the proposals were ineligible, according to the Commission.

Maroš Šefčovič, the EU commissioner in charge of sports, said that the huge interest in the first call "clearly demonstrates the need for support for transnational sport projects in the EU" and proved that the "expectations of sport stakeholders are high".

A Dutch statistician has cast doubt on the doping conviction of German speed skater Claudia Pechstein. 'As long as the biomedical passport is upheld, one in twenty athletes will find themselves unjustly convicted'

Claudia Pechstein was Germany's most successful female Olympic speed skater ever, winning five Olympic gold medals. Her career ended in disgrace on November 25 however, when The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), the ultimate sporting authority, upheld an earlier ruling by the International Skating Union (ISU) banning the 37-year old from competing for two years. The conviction cited abnormalities in her blood profile found in February 2009 when the skater competed at the world all-round speed skating championships in Hamar, Norway. Pechstein has always denied any wrongdoing.

A spacecraft designed to rocket wealthy tourists into space as early as 2011 was unveiled Monday in what backers of the venture hope will signal a new era in aviation history.

The long-awaited glimpse of SpaceShipTwo marks the first public appearance of a commercial passenger spacecraft. The project is bankrolled by Virgin Galactic founder, British billionaire Sir Richard Branson, who partnered with famed aviation designer Burt Rutan, the brains behind the venture.

"We want this program to be a whole new beginning in a commercial era of space travel," Branson said.

He is hopeful that they can begin the flights sometime in 2011, only after a series of rigorous safety tests. Branson said he, his family and Rutan would be the first people to make the trip to space aboard the craft.

The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has decided to close down its UFO reporting service, saying that it is an "inappropriate use of defence resources". The Ministry has closed down the voicemail and email addresses formerly available for reporting sightings.

The MoD's page, How to report a UFO sighting, was modified last week to reflect the changes. A statement was issued, saying:

The MOD has no opinion on the existence or otherwise of extra-terrestrial life. However, in over fifty years, no UFO report has revealed any evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom. The MOD has no specific capability for identifying the nature of such sightings. There is no defence benefit in such investigation and it would be an inappropriate use of defence resources.

In recent years the first Monday of December has become the busiest day for online shopping, with consumers scouting for the best deals over the weekend before making their decision on the Monday.

Between the hours of 1pm and 2pm alone, Brits spent a combined total of £33 million, a year-on-year increase of 21 per cent, with 1.43pm the peak minute with £1.4 million spent.

His underground tomb, in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, is now suffering from the wear and tear caused by tens of thousands of sweaty visitors who each year make a pilgrimage to the underground chamber where he once lay sheathed in the solid gold death-mask that has become his trademark.

Strange brown spots, apparently mould, have appeared on the walls of Tutankhamun's burial chamber. Its elaborate murals, which tell the story of his journey into the after-life, are now covered in dust and have begun to peel in places. The king's wooden coffin is losing flakes of gilded paint and may also be in the early stages of decay.

If you're concerned about Google retaining your personal data, then you must be doing something you shouldn't be doing. At least that's the word from Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place," Schmidt tells CNBC, sparking howls of incredulity from the likes of Gawker.

But the bigger news may be that Schmidt has actually admitted there are cases where the search giant is forced to release your personal data.

In the forests and remote islands around Seattle, police are setting traps for a barefoot teenage outlaw who has eluded them for nearly two years.

Police say 18-year-old Colton Harris-Moore, whose escapades are turning him into a folk legend, is a one-man crime wave, responsible for 50 burglaries as well as stealing light aircraft, which he taught himself to fly from video games, and several speedboats.

He lives in the woods, shuns shoes and catches his own food. His only technological aid is a pair of thermal-imaging goggles to hunt at night and his weakness is pizzas, which he asks to be delivered at the edge of the woods.

Swindon, a place chiefly known for its association with the building of trains, cars and very complicated roundabouts, will be officially linked with Walt Disney World, it was announced today.

The Wiltshire town famous for its old rail works and the site of a major Honda car factory has been selected as the first twin town of the Florida resort.

Swindon is one of those towns synonymous, in the imagination of people who don't live there, with stained concrete and postwar provincial grimness. See the picture caption for a fine example of deadpan British mockery.

Reporting from Colorado Springs, Colo. -  Ted Haggard climbed onto a bale of hay, Bible balanced in his palm. "Welcome to my barn," he called out. "Does anybody need a blanket?" his wife, Gayle, inquired as men and women in down coats shivered in the frigid November air. Some huddled underneath a space heater. Then the blue-jeans-clad preacher began chanting: "God is good, God is good, God is good."

....

Last month, Haggard -- who declined to be interviewed -- opened his home for a prayer meeting. He expected a dozen people. More than 100 came, and the Haggards moved the furniture out of the living room to make space. A week later, he swept out his barn and rented 75 chairs. When they were filled, people stood against the back walls. Many were former or current members of his old church who called him Pastor Ted. They said they had missed him, that he was born to preach -- not to sell insurance as he had when he first returned here. They said they had forgiven what they and Haggard regarded as his sins.

"I love a good redemption story," said Elly Kraai, a former New Life member. "I'm seeing one playing out here." If Haggard can make a comeback, it will be because many evangelical Christians find his story appealing, said Michael Hamilton, an associate history professor at Seattle Pacific University who studies evangelicalism. "Sin, sorrow, repentance, conversion and trying to live out your new faith -- that's the standard evangelical way to look at one's life," he said.